


the promising

by pipecleanerFlowers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:48:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5287802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipecleanerFlowers/pseuds/pipecleanerFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month after Alit was thrown to the dirt of a new kingdom that promised him the only kind of glory a slave can grasp, his Master tells him the name of the prince.</p><p>Leon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. started from the bottom

**Author's Note:**

> I'm literally the worst because this took forever like how long ago did u commission this holy crap?? PLEASE ENJOY I LOVE U HACHI.

The rooms under the coliseum are dark, windows plastered with grime that all but blocks out the sun, and it’s the only time that Alit actually feels like he’s in a prison. His usual armour, the armour the crowd will come to recognize him by because it’s bright, blood red, has been thrown in the corner for him. He’s in the middle of wrapping his forearms when the old wooden door creaks open. Golden flats pad inside, dust shifting.

“So you’re the victim they picked for the audience’s bloodlust today?” There’s a sigh. “What did you do wrong?”

Alit looks up from his arms, but the room is so dark he can barely make out any more than a silhouette when the door shuts again.

“I threw some punches.”

“At who?” his visitor asks.

“Some slave driver who thought he could whip me.”

There’s a laugh, and then, “Honest. I like that.”

“Not many do,” Alit says with a frown. But today they’ll cheer. Even if this is punishment, the crowd will roar for him. The burns from the ropes still ache at his wrists, but he’s good to fight (and always will be).

“Good luck out there,” his visitor says, turning around and opening the door again. “I’ll be watching.”

His hair glows in the light that pours in, crimson and gold, and he’s gone in the instant he came.

_Watching, huh?_

\+ + + + +

Alit wins, and he keeps winning, and the crimson and gold he saw that day sits on the throne on the side of the sunset, as if to glow with the power of the universe in the sky and at his feet. He always watches, and Alit takes pleasure in the fact that he knows his eyes don’t leave him.

He doesn’t show up for anyone else, any of the other slaves whipped into shape to face lions and rhinos and bulls and soldiers in cruel displays of the laws of nature (the only laws Alit knows, because hell if any of the slave drivers will tell him the few rights he does have).

He once thought the crowd would be on his side, but he realizes quickly that they’re only waiting for the day when the monsters win, when it’s his blood that paints the arena. But he’s fighting because he loves it, because he can’t lose, because his freedom is on the line.

But…

A month after he was thrown to the dirt of a new kingdom that promised him the only kind of glory a slave can grasp, his Master tells him the name of the prince.

Leon.

Sharp eyes, lined with black kohl and blessed with the burning power of the sun, were always on him, every week since the ring realized Alit had a following, since they could make more money off him that way.

Alit never saw any of the gold that changed hands, but he saw Leon and wondered if he led the whole thing. If he approved.

(The uncertain eyes that had greeted him that day didn’t seem to.)

\+ + + + +

Leon waits in the drafts, in the hallowed, dirt-ridden, bloodied halls that Alit always finds himself pushed through before fights. He claps, slowly, hidden by shadows that don’t suit him, shadows that cover his radiance, make him a normal man.

“Another win. Congratulations.”

Alit spits out a wad of blood. Maybe a tooth, but the pain in his jaw is too strong to tell. “Wanted a closer look at your favourite, huh?”

Leon smiles, lips stretching thin over his teeth as Alit holds himself up on unsteady feet, wondering if he sprained his ankle, or worse.

“You look like you need a healer.”

“This is nothing,” Alit says with a smirk, but the strain in his voice says otherwise.

“I’ll send one. Courtesy of the prince, no one should have any qualms.”

“So you really do play favourites.”

“Do you know about what’s happening in Messenia right now?” Leon asks, swiftly changing the subject and following him into further darkness, down into the labyrinth.

“Messenia?”

“Some slaves there are revolting. It’s causing quite the stir. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it?”

“Nope.”

“Many of our higher ranking soldiers and generals have been killed in the outbreak…” Leon doesn’t seem to be talking to him anymore, musing aloud. “You’re proof that slaves can be more than even the best trained.”

“It’s all I know,” Alit says, grimacing as he cracks his neck and wiggles his fingers to shake off the numbness. “So I made it my life.”

“Brave.”

“Desperate,” Alit corrects. “And in love.”

Leon smiles again, bright this time, eyes alight in the darkness. “A festival’s coming up. They said you wanted freedom?”

“More than anything.”

“Then, I’ll see you at the festival.”

\+ + + + +

The labyrinth under the coliseum is expansive, dark, rotting. Alit burns through the training programs that the slave-drivers put him through, and then burns through them again because they’re not satisfied. A third time because they want to wring him dry, but Alit would like to see them do it for a change, just to watch them heave.

It’s a challenge, and he’s exhausted by the time they let him go back to his room, a dark corner of the labyrinth where no light filters through the creaking wood and walls of dirt. He vaguely wonders when the last time he saw grass was. Or anything green, anything flourishing.

(They tell him he belongs here, call him a cockroach.)

The training drags on for days, a fortnight if Alit hasn’t forgotten to mark a day. So many exhausting nights when Alit can’t sleep because of all his built-up adrenaline, groggy mornings when they wake him up with a bucket of cold water that sets his nerves on fire.

A festival, they keep saying. A suitable challenge to put the military’s power on display. To show the strength of Prince Leon’s kingdom.

Even if the process is gruelling, Alit can’t wait.

It’ll be fun.

\+ + + + +

They finally let him into the ring. It’s the day of the festival, not that he needed the slave drivers to tell him that when the entire coliseum is strung with banners of crimson and gold, crests with lions, the symbols of the kingdom’s strength and power.

“Fight, die, that’s what they want to see,” the slave-drivers told him (but then why did he train all those long hours?).

“Put on a show and fall before Sparta’s elite power,” another said with a dark smile.

Alit has no plans to die tonight.

He wraps his forearms and is about to cover them with the now-cracked, never-replaced armour they’ve given him when the door swings open.

“That armour doesn’t suit a winner.”

Alit recognizes the voice enough to look up. He catches red, kohl-rimmed eyes in the darkness as the door creaks shut again.

“That’s the first time anyone’s called me that,” Alit says, and he can help the grin that pulls at his lips. “Why do you call a slave a winner, Leon?”

“I could ask you how you have the gall to address me as a familiar,” he replies smoothly, placing an ornate box on the bench. “You deserve this armour. If you’re going to be a sacrifice for the military, I’d rather you not get stabbed in the first thirty seconds. This will hold.”

Alit laughs. “So, do you want me to die or not?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Fair enough.”

“Wear those and we’ll find out just how sturdy they really are.”

\+ + + + +

The armour is beyond light and fits Alit well, and he barely has time to wonder how that’s possible before the crowd is roaring.

They’re angry this time, offended, and he slowly looks around the coliseum, counting just how many they deemed to throw at him, how many hoplites lay on the ground injured and bloody. He wonders how many are outright dead. He hadn’t counted, but now that he’s not distracted… twenty, total, fought him, before they stopped and realized he’d keep going like this, keep winning. He wonders if this is his cue to leave, to run to the underground and into his room, to clean his own wounds and stitch himself back up with the few supplies they did give him.

Moments last forever in the coliseum when he’s not moving, but he’s not sure what his next instructions are. No one gave him any. (No one expected him to survive.)

Then Leon stands, smiling as bright as the sun that casts shadows over the coliseum, and the audience goes silent.

“Congratulations, Alit,” he starts, voice managing to boom over the stadium, reaching him without strain. “You’ve shown me the error of our training since obviously if elites fell to a slave, then there must be something wrong with the regime. Our power has been fading, and if this was supposed to show me our power, then it is nothing but a disappointment. Do you want this country to fall to a slave uprising?”

Alit’s brow furrows. Slave uprising… Leon had mentioned it once. But...

Politics. No one would ever talk to a slave about politics. Alit’s hands clench into fists at his sides as he remembers he’s just a pawn to them all.

“The reward that would have gone to the general in the case that his men won will be confiscated and given to Alit--” What. “--who will from this moment be named a free man under the agoge, able to join barracks if he wishes to, and serve directly under me for being competent enough to show me what real power is.”

\+ + + + +

“What was that about?” Alit asks, irritated as his door opens. He doesn’t need to see him to know it’s the Prince, who’d dashed off in his direction when he left the coliseum. He throws the armour, gold, red with blood, to the dirt floor. “What are you talking about, slave uprising?”

“Not spearheaded by you. You like it here too much,” the Prince says.

(He’s right, but Alit still doesn’t know what he’s been herded into.)

“In the slave uprising, lots of my soldiers died. I told you, right?” the Prince continues. “We lost a war, recently, and since then nothing has changed. We’re growing weak, nothing like the honoured, prestigious army I used to have. The ones that could change the tides just by appearing on the battlefield. I’m going to bring about a change, starting with your performance today.”

“So you’re using me just like everyone else is. I thought the coliseum was--”

“You’re free now, aren’t you?” the Prince says, as if reading his mind. “Under me, you always will be. The people may not like it, but you’re no longer a slave. You don’t have to fight anymore. You don’t need to pay for yourself.”

“I still want to fight,” Alit says, because he doesn’t know anything else, and he likes it here (maybe even more as a free man, where they won’t lash him with whips or wake him with cold water that stings). “In the coliseum, not in your wars,” he adds. “I’m not interested in your politics.”

The Prince smiles. “You don’t have to be. So, would you like to live in a real room, with paved floors instead of dirt? I’ll have one set up for you--”

“Why are you being so nice?” Alit asks, suspicious because that’s what happens when you grow up with abusive masters, sold and bought over and over again (and even when he fights, he remembers the chains he’ll be put back into).

“Because I want to make Sparta a better place, one that welcomes slaves as equals instead of enemies or jokes. And the crowd likes you, don’t they?”

“A fickle like.”

“It’s still positive.”

Alit takes a breath. “Fine, I accept. I’ll tag along with whatever you’ve got. I don’t seem to have a choice.”

“You always will under me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you I'd post this like two nights ago and I FORGOT I'M SORRY. Here's part two, I hope you enjoy!!

The residents of the palace don’t acknowledge Alit as anything more than a slave. Maybe it’s his brash manners, the way he sits cross-legged in his chair, or the way he talks just a tad too loud. The Prince doesn’t seem to mind, inviting him to galas with generals and lieutenants, where handmaids wash and dress him, and it’s generally a strange experience because when was the last time he’d ever had a bath? Like, a proper one?

“How are you liking your quarters?” Leon asks during dinner one night, when Alit planned to snatch some bread rolls from the table and take his leave just as quickly.

But no one’s in the room except them, and suddenly it feels warmer than it has all week.

“Comfy,” Alit says, grabbing a roll and taking a bite. “It’s got a nice view of the sunset.”

“I’m glad you like it. Take a seat, we should eat together.”

Alit eyes the chairs, wooden with plush seats and backs, ones that he’s never dreamed of sitting in, never mind knew existed until a little while ago. He pulls one out, but Leon shakes his head.

“I’m not a lion, sit over here,” he says with a friendly smile, and Alit can’t say he doesn’t trust it. Not when every promise he’s made so far has been fulfilled as quickly as they’ve wrapped pinkies (and it’s stupid and childish to do so with a prince, but Leon indulges Alit’s insistent practice and never once breaks his word).

He sits in the given seat, pulling his legs up too and wondering if Leon will correct him like he always does, and takes another bite out of the roll as Leon slides a piece of parchment toward him.

“So, does a slave know how to read?”

Alit squints at the parchment, edges torn and burnt, markings all over it in neat, straight lines. “No,” he responds with a grimace that he hides behind another bite. The bread here tastes incredible compared to the gruel they shoved his way in the labyrinth.

“Would you like to learn?”

Alit’s eyes shift to the plates, the ones that aren’t cracked or ridden with dirt, that sparkle and shine like the rest of the palace, with intricate painted designs along the borders. “Who would teach me? No one wants to associate with me. Isn’t that why we’re alone tonight?”

Leon smiles and the room gets warmer still. “I could. Every night, we could dedicate some time. If you can learn to read, then maybe they’ll accept you as a part of this palace, and realize you belong here just as much as they do. After all, slaves are humans, I am human, no one here needs to be trampled on if we all have the same potential for greatness.”

“Or maybe they could watch a fight between us and realize how equal we really are,” Alit says, finishing the roll and flexing his fingers. “It’s been a week, I could use a good fight. And Sparta values battle prowess over all, right?”

“This is true,” Leon agrees. “But, there’s no harm in learning new skills, expanding your horizons beyond the you of right now.”

“So if I learn to read for your sake, will you fight for mine?”

Leon holds out his pinkie. “I promise.”

\+ + + + +

It’s embarrassing, the way Leon waves away the healer and takes her kit before kneeling down in front of Alit and wrapping his ankle.

Alit hisses in pain.

“You could have told me you’re weak there.”

“What? And have you go easy on me?”

Leon laughs and it sounds genuine. “So I could avoid it. Now I’ve just made it worse.” He shifts it and Alit nearly yelps. “See? It’s obvious you injured it somewhere along the line. You can’t fight with injuries.”

“You can battle with them.”

“You don’t have to anymore.”

“I’m not a child.”

Leon looks up, into his eyes, and smiles. “No one said you were. I’m just saying your life isn’t the one you had before Sparta. It isn’t the one you had below the coliseum. You don’t need to stitch yourself back together and you don’t need to push yourself when in pain. There are no consequences for holding back here.”

“If you’re so all-knowing, then tell me what to do ”

“Let me take care of you.”

Alit feels his cheeks heat up and he looks away. “That’s ridiculous. A prince taking care of a slave?”

“We’re abolishing that term soon.”

“How soon is soon, anyway?” Alit asks. “Don’t they all still hate me?”

“Not everyone,” Leon says, licking his lips as he adjusts Alit’s ankle again, this time more gently. “It’s a numbers game, it takes time, but we’re closer than we were a month ago when you first moved in.”

Leon finished wrapping his ankle, opening a clip with his teeth and pinning it in place.

“So that’s a good thing?” Alit asks.

“Yeah. So, keep your foot up and try not to irritate the sprain too much--”

“You’re a prince, not a nurse.”

“I’ve been trained in many things. It’s not all grand feasts and mingling, you know.”

\+ + + + +

For the next week, Leon knocks on the door every day before entering Alit’s room with a gigantic tome held under his arm, a tray with two goblets of water balanced on his other hand. Alit wonders why Leon stoops so low when he could have others do these things for him, but he’s learned not to question it. After all, Leon is not a one-trick horse and refuses to be seen as anything but a commoner in front of Alit, always in simple cotton robes, the same as the ones the palace provided for him.

Leon sets the tray on the bedside table before straightening up. “Restless?”

“You know it,” Alit says, shifting to grab one of the goblets and downing its contents quickly. “I’m so bored.”

“Well as long as you keep stretching the muscles, applying ointment, and resting, it’ll be better in no time,” Leon says, sitting down at the edge of the bed.

“It’s been a whole week.”

Leon shrugs. “Maybe more than a week, then.”

“Too long.”

“Can I see it?”

Alit nods, and Leon shifts on the bed and starts to unwrap the bandages. The tome sits next to him, full of words Alit still doesn’t have a good enough grasp to read as Leon’s cool hands brush over his skin.

“Still a bit swollen. Should I fetch more ice?”

“If you want to,” Alit says, but mostly he wants him to stay, to read out words in his slow, calming voice and teach him the alphabet for the hundredth time because all of the symbols look the same when they’re side by side.

He doesn’t know when it happened, but he’s been thinking less and less about fighting lately, about the adrenaline rush he got addicted to solely because he was privy to it so often by necessity.

“I’ll be right back,” Leon says, starting to get up.

“Can’t you just call someone else to do it?” Alit says, a little too fast, hand falling onto the prince’s shoulder.

Leon looks back to him, kohl-rimmed eyes curious as Alit quickly pulls away. “I guess I could.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because I’m just as capable of doing things on my own.”

“No, no,” Alit searches for the right words. “I mean, why do you refuse to let others carry out their jobs to serve you? Why even have them here if they can’t even do that?”

Leon’s brow furrows. “I’ve… never actually thought about that.”

“You said I don’t have to fight anymore while I’m here,” Alit says, “but you don’t have to do everything yourself either. You don’t have to take pity on me just because you think you’re the only person who will. I don’t need it.”

There’s a moment where Alit can see the gears turn and suddenly there’s a twinkle in Leon’s eyes that he’s only seen once before. “Oh,” he says.

Alit expects more, but a silence stretches between them and he’s only more and more confused with each second that passes, losing his edge.

“Oh?” he finally asks.

A smile plays on Leon’s llips that he’s doing his best to hide. “You think I’m pitying you.”

“Um. Yes.”

Suddenly, Alit’s unsure about this.

“Noted,” Leon says, before getting to his feet. “I’m going to get some ice. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Okay.”

The door shuts with a soft click and Alit wonders what just happened.

\+ + + + +

Alit’s utter refusal to stay bedridden any longer has him limping around Leon’s room, flipping through the pages of the books that lined his shelves, full of words he was starting to recognize. The balcony has a view that stretches over the entirety of Sparta, and he leans against the railing, basking in the light of the sunset and the cool breeze from over the mountains. A pile of books sits by his feet.

“You can stay for the night if you enjoy it here so much,” Leon offers, stepping out of his private quarters, cloth tied around his waist as droplets of water fall from his red and gold hair that looks like the shining gold thread they spin in the textiles district.

“Maybe,” Alit says, not taking his eyes off the scene before him. He can see the merchants in the market from here, a mother hanging laundry to dry, kids playing in the streets. “Would I have had a life like that if I hadn’t been a slave?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know… if I’d want that.”

“Why not?” Leon joins him on the balcony, hands resting on the railing.

“I like fighting,” Alit says. “I like knowing that I can’t be complacent and just expect things to be handed to me. People fight in different ways, for different reasons, and I used to fight because I had to. But now I can fight because I want to, for myself.” He pauses, sighing. “Sorry, that’s weird isn’t it--"

“Not at all.”

“It’s only been a month.”

“It’s not enough, is it?” Leon asks.

“Not really.”

\+ + + + +

Alit starts thinking about his world in terms of before and after. Before Leon, he’d had his instincts and his will to survive. After Leon, he has… everything.

He smiles more, not out of spite, not out of defiance. He eats more, and his muscles no longer look so stringy. He knows how to read, or at least he’s getting to a point of literacy any ten-year-old would have, and that’s more than he’s ever had. And… he has a friend.

“You look well today,” Leon says one day during breakfast, as Alit piles food onto his plate.

“I feel well today,” he responds before digging in.

\+ + + + +

They fight again, when Alit’s ankle has healed and he’s not straining it by pretending it’s okay. They trade blow for blow and only stop when the sun begins to disappear into the horizon, when Leon’s attendants rush in and tell him he’s over-exerting himself (but mostly they’ve been watching wide-eyed, afraid their prince might actually be defeated, that Alit’s really the one leading the Messenian slave revolt and that this is the first step in their convoluted plan to take over Sparta).

Leon laughs off their concern as they ushered him toward the benches, handing him towels and water. Alit drops to the dirt, a similar grin on his lips as her watches them dote over their prince, their prince who could fight toe-to-toe with a warrior.

It was fun. Too much fun.

(He’d forgotten what it was like just to spar without worrying about metal chains and chafed wrists and the threat of being killed.)

\+ + + + +

Sparring in daylight and studying literature by candlelight continues on, and Alit marks off his second month in the palace.

He still hasn’t been let back into the coliseum, not after Leon found out that he had more serious injuries than just a sprained ankle, all made worse from their intense sparring sessions. Alit’s had so much time to heal in his bed that he ends up tracing the intricate embossed patterns on the ceiling with his eyes, trying to burn them into his memory like directions on a map.

“Bored yet?” Leon asks, shuffling through the door with a tray held lightly in his hands, goblets filled with water sitting on it along with a plate of food.

“Bored three days ago,” Alit mutters, pushing himself to sit upright against the plush headboard of his four-poster. “When’s nurse Leon gonna let me fight?”

Leon ignores him. “Honestly, I’m surprised you can still move with all the injuries you have. A cracked rib?”

“Barely felt it.”

“You said that about your wrist too, and now it only has about half the movement it had before.”

“I can still knock you out with my fist.”

Leon smiles, warm and knowing like usual, and Alit feels his heart do a thing as the sunset reflects in his eyes. “I don’t doubt that you can.”

“So, how’s ‘abolishing slavery’ going for you?” Alit asks after a pregnant pause where he gathers up his thoughts, the ones about Leon’s soft lips and the crinkles at the corners of his bright red eyes when he smiles, and puts them away to dwell on later.

“My immediate attendants like you.”

“The ones who watch us spar?” Alit asks.

Leon nods. “Yeah, they think you’ve been giving me a handicap since you’re so broken. Like it’s a sign that you’re not actually out for my blood.”

“Do they think I’m letting you win?” Alit asks with a smirk. “Because I can assure you that’s not the case.”

“We’ll blame your self-care negligence on that.”

“It’s alright. I have you to worry about that for me.”

\+ + + + +

“Want to skip your lesson today?” Leon asks.

“Huh?” Alit shakes himself out of his reverie. “Uh, that’s okay. I’m focused, I swear!”

Leon just smiles. “Who was the one talking about being afraid to be complacent?”

“I told you! I’m focused, just repeat… all of that…?” Alit requests, feeling a little guilty as Leon nods and begins to read out the passage again.

They’re on his bed, in his bedroom, books spread out over the covers with letter charts and phonetic guides. The one in Leon’s hands is a story about Cupid and Psyche, a story that Alit had wanted to read because it was about love (and maybe he’d always had a fascination with love, and maybe now that he has time to think about it instead of when his next meal will be, he’s starting to hope).

Mostly, though, Alit is disappointed with how weak Cupid is, and how stupid Psyche is. Leon laughed when he pointed this out, but all he got in return was a “You’ll see,” between giggles.

Leon begins again, but all Alit can focus on is how he looks in the dim candlelight as all the thoughts he’s shoved away come back again with a vengeance, reminding him how pretty his prince is. A flickering lantern sits on the bed, casting and recasting the shadows on his face. His lips move, but Alit can only hear his heart thumping loudly in his chest, crawling up into his throat.

“Did you get it that time?” Leon asks, turning to face him and snapping Alit out of his head again. His kohl-lined eyes regard him with amusement.

“Y-yeah.”

“Let’s take a break,” Leon says again, smiling in that odd, knowing way of his.

This time, Alit can’t help but concede. “Okay.”

The break is long, or maybe it just feels that way because Leon leaves to refill the copper jug with water and to get another pack of ice for Alit’s wrist, which had swollen up and was in the middle of yet another recuperation session.

Alit leans against the headboard, tilting his head back to trace the patterns on the ceilings again, the ones that have become so familiar over the couple months that he’s spent in this room, in this palace, with Leon by his side. It all feels like a dream, like it’ll be taken away any moment if he gets just the tiniest bit too complacent with what the world has given him, or if he stops being grateful.

(He’s started to pray, to gods he never knew of because no one had taught him there were higher powers. Though, he’s not sure if back then he would’ve believed them.)

When Leon comes back, the door creaking open and clicking shut behind him, Alit’s eyes snap back to his.

“Welcome back.”

“Feel a bit better?” Leon asks, pouring more water in their goblets.

“Maybe.”

Leon puts a hand against Alit’s forehead and smiles. “You might be getting a fever?”

Alit knows it’s not, but he’s not sure he knows what else it could be. What are words when Leon’s this close to him, making his skin burn. “I don’t think so,” Alit says quietly.

“Then I wonder what it could be,” Leon says, thoughtful, but Alit’s sure he already knows (because even if he doesn’t have the words, Leon’s always been one step ahead).

“Love.” It blurts out, stuttered and awkward, and Alit feels his face heating up. “Uhm, I mean--”

Leon just smiles and nods. “Yeah, it could be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sparta and Messenia are real places and the slave uprising is a real thing that Sparta had issues with, but honestly nothing is all that historically accurate because Sparta City isn't even a real modern place so. Loosely based on history? Very loosely?


End file.
